OpenOffice Developers Split From Oracle, Create Own Organization

[Xiahou]

I think this could get ugly....

It seems like Oracle is having a major falling out with the OO community and the "community" is taking it's ball and going home. The rub is that Oracle owns the trademark on "OpenOffice.org" and apparently doesn't intend on letting the newly formed Document Foundation use it- so they're rebranding their product as LibreOffice.

If Oracle still intends to maintain Open Office while the DF developes Libre Office, they're going to fracture the user base. I hate to see this since I like OpenOffice and now use it exclusively at home. I guess we'll have to wait and see what things look like once the dust settles.

[Lemur]

As an OpenOffice user, I have to ask ... couldn't Oracle have averted this? What a fiasco.

[caravel]

Yes I read about this a few days ago and it comes as no surprise. Oracle are just not open source friendly, so you can hardly blame the community for splitting off.

As to a fork being a bad thing, history would prove otherwise. Most open source projects have forked at some stage and none of them have died off completely due to forking. Some forks have merged back to the original project making it stronger than ever. The fork sends the project off in a direction it otherwise might not have taken. This is actually all a fuss about nothing. I will be going with Libreoffice. What's in a name anyway?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well it's not like there wasn't a fork before: http://go-oo.org/

[Xiahou]

Well it's not like there wasn't a fork before: http://go-oo.org/

Yes. And it's one that virtually no one (that is, no casual user) heard of. A fork isn't inherently bad, but OO was really gaining mainstream acceptance. Most people won't know of LibreOffice and will continue using OO by default- leaving them in Oracle's questionable hands. The OpenOffice.org site says nothing of the split- the only way you can find out about it is by reading through the forums.

[Tellos Athenaios]

The difference between go-oo and libre office is that go-oo was open office + disputed extras and highly a Novell-pet-peeve; whereas the DF/libre-office effort enjoys a much broader support and is essentially the entire open office project minus the trade mark. Crucially it contains the various 3rd parties which repackage and brand it for each respective platform/OS.